1. Field
The present disclosure relates to a home appliance having a door, and more particularly, to a home appliance configured to assist a user in easily opening or closing a door.
2. Background
Home appliances may refer to products that perform a variety of functions using electricity or other energy at home or indoors. Examples of home appliances may include a washing apparatus for washing or drying laundry, a refrigerator for keeping food at a refrigerating or freezing temperature, a dishwasher for washing dishes, and gas or electric ovens or microwave ovens for cooking food. Of course, in addition to the aforementioned examples, various other types of home appliances may be present.
In many cases, home appliances may include a cabinet defining the external appearance of the home appliance. In turn, a chamber in which an object is received may be defined in the cabinet, and the cabinet may define the chamber. For example, the chamber may be configured into various shapes according to the types or purposes thereof, such as a space for cooking food, a space for washing laundry, a space for storage or processing of clothes, a space for washing dishes, or a space for storage of food, for example. Of course, the chamber may be referred to by various names according to the purposes or usages of home appliances.
The home appliances may include a door configured to be opened or closed for entrance or exit of an object. The door may be provided with a handle to assist a user in opening or closing the door by gripping the handle with the hand. As the capacity of the home appliance, i.e. the capacity of the chamber increases, the size of the door increases, which problematically increases the weight of the door. Therefore, there is a need to assist the user in easily opening or closing the door using the handle despite the size and weight of the door for enhanced user convenience.
FIG. 1 illustrates an oven or dishwasher among home appliances. As illustrated, a handle 40 is provided at an upper portion of a front surface of a door 30, and the door 30 is opened or closed via pivotal rotation thereof about the bottom thereof as a pivot center. The handle 40 is fixed to the door 30. To open or close the door 30, the user has to grip and pull the handle 40 provided at a front surface of the cabinet 20, and simultaneously apply downward force to the handle 40. This type of door may be referred to as a pull-down type door.
In many cases, when opening the door 30, the user “a” will grip the handle 40 with the hand such that the back of the hand “b” faces upward. In this case, the wrist of the user will inevitably be bent as the door 30 is opened, and even the situation in which the back of the hand “b” is pushed by an upper edge 30a of the door 30 may occur. Although changing a hand's posture of gripping the handle 40 in the course of opening the door 30 may be considered to eliminate this discomfort, this is not easy because changing from the hand that has already gripped the handle 40 to the other hand is inconvenient.
On the other hand, it may be contemplated for the user to open the door 30 by gripping the handle 40 with the hand such that the palm faces upward. However, even in this case, the wrist of the user will be bent and the wrist or the palm may be pushed by the edge 30a. 
As exemplarily illustrated in FIG. 1, the handle 40 also deviates or is blocked from the visual field of the user in a state in which the door 30 is rotated and opened to some extent. In particular, in a state in which the door 30 is rotated by 90 degrees and is completely opened, the user cannot see the handle 40, and it is inconvenient for the user to grip the handle 40 when closing the door 30.
In the case of opening or closing the door using the above-described handle, use of the handle may not be easy because the user must move various joints and muscles, such as the wrist, the arm, the knee, or the shoulder. In addition, since an increase in the capacity of home appliances entails an increase in the size and weight of the door, user inconvenience caused by the opening or closing of the door may further increase.
For various reasons, there is a need for provision of convenient home appliances that adopt an ergonomic handle design to minimize labor and discomfort of the user when opening or closing the door. The applicant proposed Korean Patent Application No. 10-2012-0084830 (Patent Registration No. 10-1370923) (hereinafter referred to as “preceding disclosure”), in order to solve the problems with general home appliances having a door as illustrated in FIG. 1.
The preceding disclosure proposed a home appliance in which the rotation of a handle link connected to a handle and the rotation of a door are linked to each other such that the handle is rotated as the door is rotated. This rotation linkage may occur by a mechanism in which a distance between a rotating shaft of the door and a rotating shaft of a link enables the link to rotate the handle link as the door is rotated. However, the preceding disclosure proposes only a basic mechanism for the linkage between the handle and the door and has many problems in terms of application to products in practice.
In one example, when a significantly large vertical load is applied to the handle, the handle link may be damaged. When an upward or downward vertical force is applied to the handle, the upward or downward vertical force is substantially applied to the rotating shaft of the door. Thus, no moment to rotate the door results, which means that great force is applied to the handle link. In particular, when attempting to move the home appliance by gripping the handle, the load of the home appliance may be applied through the handle, which may cause damage to the handle link.
In addition, the radius of rotation of the handle link or the handle is much smaller than the radius of rotation of the door, resulting in shaking of the handle or the handle link while the door is closed. The handle may be forwardly and rearwardly spaced apart from the door, rather than coming into close contact with the front surface of the door, when the door is in a closed state.
Accordingly, the preceding disclosure proposes only the basic mechanism and may not ensure the reliability of a product in terms of application to the product in practice.
The above references are incorporated by reference herein where appropriate for appropriate teachings of additional or alternative details, features and/or technical background.